Munich Startup: The last time we spoke, you said that your solution was being used in around 30 cafeterias, canteens, and cafés. How is the current situation?
Delicious Data: A lot has changed at Delicious Data in the meantime. We are proud that we are making further progress with our mission to reduce food waste. We have a product that creates significant added value for our customers in the German-speaking region and now have several references on the market. With our sales forecasts and food waste monitoring, we support large corporate canteens, caterers, and student services organizations. We have also launched a new product feature called the Intelligent Daily Planner, which allowed us to enter the bakery market as a new segment. In total, we have now been able to win around 1,000 locations to use our software solution for reducing food waste.
And most importantly, we have also achieved a great climate-relevant impact with our customers: Since our founding 5 years ago, we have now saved 820,000 meals, which corresponds to 1,000 tons of CO2 equivalents and 15 million hectoliters of economic water.
“The biggest challenge was the Corona lockdown”
Munich Startup: What obstacles have you encountered along the way?
Delicious Data: The biggest challenge so far was the Corona lockdown. The period when a large part of our customers had to close. We used the crisis to further develop our product and also to better manage intraday production, which is very relevant for bakery chains, gas station bistros, and cafés. This allows overproduction and sellouts to be avoided even better.
Munich Startup: How has your solution evolved?
Delicious Data: We are always in close dialogue with our customers and orient ourselves towards their needs to make the product even more user-friendly and to contribute to greater efficiency and sustainability in companies.
Initially, we started with the sales forecast feature and can help better plan overall demand for the coming days and weeks, and thus purchase more precisely. To become even more accurate and achieve a further reduction in unnecessary food waste, we can now also calculate demand for the current day in more detail over the course of hours and derive recommendations for the correct production quantity. In doing so, we contribute to simplifying the daily work especially at store locations that faced the challenge of planning uncertainties with intraday production.
Munich Startup: And how does it look financially for you?
Delicious Data: In addition to revenues from our customers, we now have new capital and additional partners with expertise on board for the next growth phase. Both help us grow the company faster.
Opportunities for us: we can expand the team faster to further develop the product and win more customers.
“If you optimize something, you also have to measure the value concretely”
Munich Startup: What learnings have you taken away as a founding team so far?
Delicious Data: There are many learnings that we have gathered since founding the company. One that was particularly important for us: If you optimize something, you also have to measure the value concretely. At the beginning, we only looked at optimizing planning and tried to draw conclusions about savings in food waste from this, which was not very accurate. It was crucial to weigh the waste directly and record it through our system, which has provided great added value for us and our partners.
Munich Startup: What role did the Munich ecosystem play on your journey so far?
Delicious Data: Munich has a very good startup ecosystem, which we have already benefited greatly from:
- Right at the beginning, funding (startup grant from Gründerland Bayern)
- Incubators Gate Garching and Werk1
- Many investors are present here
- Networks like Baystartup, which supported us with coaching and network access in implementing our funding rounds
- Accelerators EIT Food / Xpreneurs
- Many talents (there are some B2B SaaS companies, universities like TUM, LMU)
Delicious Data: “Scaling is the next step”
Munich Startup: What milestones are you working towards next?
Delicious Data: For us, the next step is to scale by inspiring even more customers with our mission, and to do so beyond state borders as well.
The focus is now on: internationalization, team growth, product optimization, opening up market segments for retail food trade (Lebensmitteleinzelhandel, ed. note) and bakeries.
Anyone who wants to meet Delicious Data can now register free of charge for the “Startup meets Craft” event on October 19.
